As we embark on 2018, it’s interesting to consider what happened 100 years ago in 1918. For medical historians, the date is significant because it is associated with the influenza pandemic that swept the world and killed over 21 million people. Oddly enough, the influenza pandemic didn’t seem to make a great impact on collective memory and was soon forgotten. Historians have pondered this collective neglect and come up with many reasons why people forgot the flu so quickly. Perhaps, in the pre-vaccine (most of them), pre-penicillin days, death by infectious disease was so much more common that it was more easily conceptualized as “normal.” In reality, coming with the war, I suspect influenza was shelved in terms of memory once the war ended. People moved on.

Share this:

Like this:

LikeLoading...

Related

About afinley41

I'm an author and college professor who works on French terrorists in the 1930s and 1940s. I'm writing a new book right now with Gayle K. Brunelle called "Vengeance: Vichy and the Assassination of Marx Dormoy." I'm also focused on the French Holocaust. In March of 2013 I'll take students on a study abroad called Paris/Auschwitz.